Stop Squadristi! Stop!

Sorry for my tardiness. I had the update to my last post with the Tim Blair link posted a few days ago. There was an error with the publishing that prevented it from being viewed by you, the public.

The responses to the hacking and deletion of Anonymous Lefty and Boltwatch has been mixed.

Tim Blair's comments condemning the hacking are largely undermined by his uncritical parroting of accusations against Mr Lefty by Andrew Landeryou;

"UPDATE. Andrew Landeryou contacts Sear after being accused of hackerizing:

"The legal professional had to be reminded that by making that claim he was accusing me of engaging in a serious crime under Australian law. Clearly no genius, his stuttering and stammering indicated he hadn’t quite thought about that." - Andrew Landeryou

Sear’s claim has been removed.

(Tim Blair, 2006)

If Tim Blair had been a bit more careful with the facts he would realise that Mr Lefty never made an accusation against Landeryou. I read what Lefty wrote and he was voicing suspicions, not accusations. Then there is the fact that most of Blair's readership/fan base are either blaming Mr Lefty, celebrating the destruction of his blog or worse.

The positively fascistic rant by Grimmy is disturbing. I hope it is parody.

Still, if Tim Blair is impotent in chiding those (many) of his fans who embrace suppression of free speech and left incredulous in sympathy by his parroting of Landeryou's ridiculous attacks on Mr Lefty, at least some right wingers appear to be doing the right thing.

Skeptic Lawyer (a libertarian righty) makes a good, largely sober analysis of the situation here, and isn't afraid to take those with anti-Mr Lefty conspiracy theories and hate peddling to task. Ms Righty responds in kind.

I will say though, that Skeptic Lawyer spends too much time (which thankfully isn't much) trying to redefine the culprit as not being a right-winger. If one observes the blogging habits of blog-nasties (as I have) and has kept an eye on the prior work of the culprit (in a large part where they chose to blam), one can see that they have arisen from the "right side" of the local blogosphere or at least have been heavily inculcated in it.

The culprit may not turn out to be a right winger, but if I am to speculate, I'd rather an educated guess than a self-serving speculation (as genuine and otherwise as morally correct as SL's anaylsis is). The best way for the right to save face in this is to recognise that it doesn't have to; even if the culprit is a right-winger it means little for the right as a whole.

Defensiveness doesn't help.

Regardless of political pole, people are capable of treating others with the most basic of human decency. Perhaps that makes worse the deplorable actions of the few; they should be capable of better. Indeed, if it weren't holidays and if I expected Tim Blair to spend a bit more time at his keyboard, I'd be condemning him for collusion with the culture that spawned the stalking of Mr Lefty.

Vapid condemnation coupled with (fallacious) attacks on the victim and a blind eye turned towards apologetics for the act don't make for genuine opposition. One has to make a more committed effort to make such a claim.

Personally, I'm starting up a side project; Squadristi Stop. It'll have security tips on how to lessen or stop the kind of tactics we are seeing. Fortunately, it shouldn't be too much work; I've even emailed some of these tips to other bloggers so it can be in part a bit of a copy and paste job. I may make it collaborative in order to maintain basic IP lists (to compliment that already automatically blocked by haloscan.)

I'll now leave you with a few dot points to address some of the fallacies that I've seen surrounding the topic (as at 27th December).

• "El Stalko" has claims that he is Mr Lefty's suspect.

Wrong. "El Stalko" was yesterday's stalker. Mr Lefty has not narrowed down a list of suspects and has referred to the latest events as being "for the past month or so." While I don't see that Mr Lefty can exclude "El Stalko", and "El Stalko" has cybersquatted another blog recently (now hidden by an invite only login*), I'm not sure that Mr Lefty actually has "El Stalko" down as a suspect at all.

While he has the motive and the mentality, he's an outside chance at best. The most likely motive behind "El Stalko's" claims is that he's trying to propagate traffic for his own blog (which lost a lot after its campaign of slander and harassment against Mr Lefty was withdrawn.)

• Andrew Landeryou claims that Mr Lefty accused him of hacking the site (via a proxy).

Wrong. Lefty claimed that he suspects that Landeryou may have in some way been involved. Suspects as in list of suspects; that it wouldn't surprise you if one of them was guilty, but you can't claim which one is guilty.

Lefty didn't accuse Landeryou of anything and because he didn't want to waste his time with Landeryou, Lefty removed his comment. It's called keeping the peace.

• Mr Lefty deleted his own blogs so he could smear the right-wing.

This is just crazy talk. There has been no evidence to suggest this at all. Add to this the fact that Mr Lefty claims that the act isn't representative of the right, and voila! You have fully blown paranoia!

Meh... this list is getting tiresome already... It's an asinine topic... That people can run such dis-information apparently with so little effort is a little worrying. Best to just ask Lefty yourself.

If you don't read me again before then, have a safe and happy new year.

* If "El Stalko" reveals his identity by modifying the cyber-squatted blog, then so be it. I won't remove the link, but I won't name him myself and I won't let people name him in my comments threads. Unless he names himself first that is. This'll be the only link he gets from my blog though. I'd suggest you don't participate on his blogs unless you want him to dog you with abuse for a while.

Tags: Internet+Squadristi, Cyber+Stalking, Cyber+Safety, Blogosphere